Tuesday, June 28, 2016

The Lego Movie universe continues on apace, even if the sequel to the original film has moved back a year from a 2018 to a 2019 release. Now fan site Brickset has dug up a catalogue from Warner Bros.' at Licensing Expo 2016, which reveals that The Lego Ninjago Movie voice cast includes Jackie Chan, Dave Franco, Michael Peña and Kumail Nanjiani.
Ninjago, which was originally announced back in 2013 as part of the wider Lego Movie universe, uses the TV series' fantastical world that blends martial arts with helicopters and motorbikes. The set-up has Ninjas and Samurai fighting skeleton armies, dragons, snake-men, and the evil warlord Lord Gamadon, who's been banished to the Underworld and understandably wants to get back to Ninjagoland.

While the show of course has it's own cast, the characters will be played by a variety of funny folk, signalling that this will definitely aim for a comic tone along the lines of the first Lego Movie. Chan is aboard to play Master Wu, with Franco as Lloyd, Peña playing Kai, Nanjiani as Zane, his fellow Silicon Valley actor Zach Woods playing Jay and Broad City's Abbi Jacobson as Nya.

Charlie Bean, who has worked on project such as CG 'toon TRON: Uprising is the director in charge of shepherding the film, potentially a tougher sell than any of the other Lego projects, to the screen.